JIM KING landmark events including RockNess and Bestival, and in 2004 King founded event production agency Loud Sound, aka LS Events.
Firmly established at AEG, King emerged from the industry’ s pandemic paralysis with immense confidence, expanding the BST Hyde Park event series by 50 % from six to nine shows. Now, on the back of a challenging time for many festival operators, he is building on the success of the 10-day All Points East series at Victoria Park with the launch of the LIDO festival at the same location.
With a focus on promoting sustainability and supporting grassroots talent, LIDO is set to include headline performances by acts such as Jamie xx, London Grammar, Charli XCX, and Massive Attack, with the latter’ s show powered entirely by renewable energy batteries.
The boy who would be king
Just a few months after a young Jim King arrived in Liverpool to begin a business studies degree, a visit to local independent record shop 3 Beat Records in 1990 proved life changing. While flicking through the vinyl, King met James Barton. The current chairman of festival giant Superstruct, back then Barton was a promoter and DJ and was soon to be immersed in the running of the Cream nightclub he had launched with Darren Hughes in 1992.
A friendship between the dance music fans was swiftly struck and in between his studies, King helped the Cream team by turning his hand to everything from building a membership database to organising the coaches.
Once he had graduated, and returned home from university, King found himself facing the tedium of painting doors for a living. Understandably, he was delighted to receive a phone call from Barton offering him a full-time job.“ I put my paint brush down immediately, jumped in my car and drove straight back up to Liverpool,” he says.
With Barton managing Deconstruction Records in London, and needing to
“ WE WEREN’ T RECKLESS OR ARROGANT, BUT WE WERE FEARLESS.”
relocate to the capital, he thought King would be an ideal addition to the Cream team.“ I felt strongly we needed to put somebody in at Cream who was smart, very organised and still liked a good Saturday night out but knew what it was like to go to the office on a Monday morning and help run a business,” says Barton.
“ We all knew how to build brands and audiences, but we didn ' t really know how to build out a real business operation on the back end. Jim built a solid foundation so we could move forward and grow the business and Cream brand.”
Cream may have proved the sweet spot enabling King to kick off his career in earnest, but his prowess for promoting shows dates right back to his schooldays. As a teenager, he had fallen in love with the dance music scene while attending Acid House parties, including Sin at London’ s Astoria, alongside his brother. In 1989, between classes, King sold tickets for his first event, a mini‘ rave’ at the Palmers Green Athletic Social Club.
WHAT OTHERS SAY...
Rock en Seine Superstruct chairman James Barton
The tickets were sold out within a week, and when the night was over, the budding promoter proudly laid out the takings on his mum’ s kitchen table; some £ 400, all in coins.“ I thought I was the richest person in the world,” he laughs.
King says that working at Cream often felt more like a lifestyle choice than a job:“ Cream was very much something we were living as a friendship group, it didn’ t feel like work. We all lived together; Darren Hughes and I shared a house with Paul Bleasdale, who was one of Cream’ s DJs. It was an exciting time to be in Liverpool; the city was very much on the up in the cultural industries, and Cream was one of the shining lights, if not the shining light at that point.”
Initially a relatively small club with a capacity of around 600, it wasn’ t long before the huge demand for Cream led to it being repeatedly expanded.
“ Liverpool, at that time, was fairly run down,” says King.“ Cream was in a city centre location, where there was a series of empty warehouses, and we occupied one of them. When we needed to grow, we literally just knocked a hole through the wall and grew into the next warehouse. We ended up occupying four.”
“ We were doing £ 25,000 to £ 30,000 in revenue on a Saturday night, and it felt like millions at the time,” says Barton.
“ Jim was always able to keep the ship sailing through any storm. He works with the biggest acts in the world, and that’ s a result of his ability to deliver time and again. Jim has always been a loyal guy and I consider him to be a lifelong friend.”
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